Untold lives blog

What would we do if the Thames froze over this winter? Would we hold a traditional Frost Fair, health and safety permitting?  The Thames froze over on at least 23 occasions between 1309 and 1814, and the most extensive freezes were recorded in 1683/4, 1715/16, 1739/40, 1789, and, for the last time, in February 1814. 

Why did the Thames freeze over then and not now? There are two main reasons: the temperatures were lower on average and remained lower for longer periods, and the architecture along the river was different, slowing down the water’s flow. The Old London Bridge was a stone building with nineteen arches, and all piers under the bridge were equipped with breakwaters to protect the bridge and the houses on top of it from the full force of the water. The river’s path was thereby slowed down, enabling the river to freeze in the right conditions. When the Old London Bridge was replaced in 1831 with a newer model with only five arches, the water was able to flow much faster, and the river never froze again near the centre of London.

 Frost Fair on the River Thames

When the ice on the river was solid enough Frost Fairs were held between the Old London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. The Fairs were spontaneous parties on the frozen river, and large numbers of people joined in. Tents were erected, made up of blankets held up by disused oars. There were temporary pubs on the ice with names such as ‘The City of Moscow’ or ‘The Wellington’,  whole oxen were roasted, and people could enjoy entertainments such as bull or bear baiting, roundabouts, and puppet-shows, or play football or other games. Of course not everyone was pleased and in the mood for a party when the river froze over. The watermen who usually ferried people across the water by boat did of course have to continue to make a living and therefore charged anyone who wanted to cross the frozen river.

 
 Frost Fair Printing Office

Frost Fairs were occasions to remember, and printing presses were brought on to the ice to print souvenirs for people who had visited them. In 1814 two types of presses were installed on the river, a hand-press for letterpress printing and a copperplate printing press. The British Library has a number of examples of these souvenirs which were ‘printed on the ice on the River Thames’ from all recorded Frost Fairs. The printing presses are very clearly visible in contemporary illustrations, showing that they were very much part of the occasion. In 1814 there was a 'Frost Fair Printing Office’ with a large crowd of people surrounding the letterpress printing press. The souvenirs usually contain a decorative border, a poem or other short text, and the visitor’s name.

  Frost Fair keepsake, printed on the Thames: 'Mrs Mary Coates'

We definitely wouldn’t bring old-fashioned printing presses on to the river if it did freeze again now, but I’m sure we would take pictures of each other and have other little souvenirs produced which would remind us of the once-in-a-lifetime visit to the frozen River Thames.

Karen Limper-Herz
Printed Historical Sources 

Illustrations taken from From A collection of bills, cuttings from periodicals, prints, etc. illustrating the fairs held on the Thames, during the winters of 1683-4, 1814, etc - reference 840.m.27.(1.)

Today is the anniversary of the death on 21 January 1950 of Eric Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell.  Andy Simons tells us about Orwell's collection of pamphlets which now have an online inventory to help researchers explore this fascinating resource.

George Orwell’s collection of mostly political ephemera was an important barometer of the social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, and a measure of his influences during those decades.  While Orwell’s personal papers went to University College London and the National Archives, his miscellaneous materials are held by the British Library.  Totalling over 2700 items, a full inventory of Orwell’s collection of pamphlets is now available via the British Library’s website.

Orwell was not a writer of ‘bestselling’ books until the end of his life, after the Second World War.  He became known as a journalist, a critic of other people’s writings and a word-portraitist of the landscape of politics.  It is likely he never passed up the opportunity to acquire pamphlets of any persuasion.  He wryly observed in The Tribune that the pamphleteer’s road was paved by a “complete disregard for fairness or accuracy” (8 December 1944).   Perhaps the most appealing aspect of his pamphlets collection is that he wasn’t Hoovering them up to form a George Orwell Archive; he considered them as a spectrum of thought that was deserving of preserving.    

While Orwell could not acquire and preserve the thoughts of every political entity, those caught in his net were numerous.  He documented the major political parties and the better known minor ones that didn’t figure much electorally, such as The Communist Party of Great Britain, and The Socialist Party.  Orwell was especially strong in acquiring the ephemera of the fringe Left, but any non-mainstream organisation was worthy of attention, for example The Central Board for Conscientious Objectors and The Society of Individualists.  He was keen on foreign publications too, including much from Moscow.  

The author’s interest in non-human animals is revealed including articles from issues of The Smallholder and The Farmer and Stock-Breeder.  His wife Eileen worked for the Ministry of Food and so they retained a range of ‘war cookery’ guides.  And, given his pulmonary problems from tuberculosis, one shouldn’t be surprised that he read Smokeless Air: The Smoke Abatement Journal.

 
1899.SS.35 (15) 

Perhaps the oddest item is a four-page pamphlet from January 1945, The War in Wax, an attempt to get shoppers in London’s Oxford Street to buy tickets to a twisted version of Madame Tussauds.  This promised paying customers an experience of "The horrors of the German Concentration Camp," “Tree-Hangings,” “Stamping to death,” and, on the last page, a children’s section of mechanical moving figures including Cinderella, Laurel & Hardy, Disney characters, Bing Crosby, and even Mae West.   This so-called attraction was too absurd for Orwell not to share, so the concept had a walk-on role as Ingsoc propaganda in 1984.  

Orwell’s heaps of pamphlets informed his writing, both fiction and non fiction. He took pride in his squirrelling-away of pamphlets, “political, religious and what-not”.  In 1949, he estimated that this hoard numbered 1200-2000, but even the higher figure was an underestimation.  He wrote that “a few of them must be great rarities” and they were “bound to be of historical interest in 50 years time.”  In line with most of his considerations, he wasn’t wrong.


Andy Simons
Curator, Printed Historical Sources

Further reading
Inventory of George Orwell’s pamphlet collection

A longer version of George Orwell’s Loft

George Orwell  - help  for researchers

King George III’s education included languages (English, German and Latin), sciences (physics, chemistry and astronomy), history and mathematics.  He learnt about art and architecture, and he was taught several accomplishments.  Amongst these last, he learnt to dance, to fence, to ride, music (he played the harpsichord and the flute) and to draw.  His artistic education was varied.  The artist and architect Joshua Kirby (1716-1774) was appointed as his drawing master in 1756, while George was still Prince of Wales, and taught him perspectival drawing.

In 1761, not long after George succeeded his grandfather as King of Great Britain, Kirby published The Perspective of Architecture.  The large folio volume included ‘One Hundred Copper-Plates’ with a frontispiece designed by William Hogarth, and cost three guineas ‘in sheets’ (unbound).  It was a luxurious and expensive volume, dedicated to the King.  The elaborately calligraphy of the engraved dedication leaf proclaimed that the work was ‘begun by Your Majesty’s Command, carried on under your Eye, and now Published by Your Royal Munificence’.  More than that, it also included one plate for which the original had been drawn by George himself, although Kirby did not have the presumption to say so explicitly.

Plate 66 shows a colonnaded house in Palladian style.

John Kirby, The Perspective of Architecture. London, 1761. Plate 66 (Reference: 56.i.19-20)

The original drawing in pencil, pen and ink and grey wash is now in the Royal Collection, described as a ‘Perspective drawing of a classical building with pavilion wings’.  An annotation by Kirby ascribes it to his royal pupil.

Kirby and his son William were made joint clerks of the works at  in 1761.  George III’s interest in architectural drawing, also fostered by his simultaneous study of architecture with Sir William Chambers, continued for many years.  It is evident in the King’s Library (where what must have been Kirby’s presentation copy is kept) and the King’s Topographical Collection, which contains many drawings as well as innumerable architectural prints.  Both collections provide ample testimony to the range and depth of the King’s artistic and cultural interests.

Tobias Smollett. Continuation of the Complete History of England. London, 1760-65. Vol. 4 (Reference: 1608/476) 

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800


Further reading:
Jeremy Black. George III: America’s last King. New Haven and London, 2006.
John Brooke, King George III.  London, 1985

Visit our exhibition Georgians Revealed

George II succeeded his father as King of Great Britain in 1727, at the age of forty-four.  He has had a bad press ever since, for he is still seen as a dull, regimented, tight-fisted philistine. This image is far from being accurate.

George II, frontispiece. Thomas Salmon. The Chronological Historian. 3rd ed. London, 1747. (291.f.22-23) 

When George I came to England in 1714 to claim his new throne, he was accompanied by his son and daughter-in-law, George and Caroline the new Prince and Princess of Wales.  The young couple quickly began to pursue an active cultural life, regularly attending public plays and operas and playing a key part in court life from drawing room receptions to balls.  When Prince George quarrelled with his father in 1717 (the two were not reconciled until 1720), he and his wife set up a rival court at Leicester House on the north side of what is now Leicester Square.  George I was forced to undertake an uncharacteristically lively programme of court entertainments to keep up with them.

George II was very fond of Hanover, where he had been born and grew up.  Once he became king he returned there as regularly as he could, usually during the summer months when the British parliament was not sitting and he could safely be absent from his kingdom.  On one such visit he showed that he was as capable of fun as any of his subjects.  In the summer of 1740, George had been widowed for some three years and had an acknowledged mistress, Amalie Sophie Marianne von Wallmoden who had recently been created Countess of Yarmouth.  His fourth daughter Mary had just been married to Friedrich II, Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel.  Her visit to Hanover with her new husband provided a perfect excuse for courtly festivities.

A description of some of the entertainments was provided by a visiting courtier and diplomat from Prussia, Baron Jakob Friedrich Bielfeld.  His letters were published in an English translation in London 1768-1770.  In the autumn of 1740, Beilfeld wrote of the ‘grand entertainments’ given by George II in Hanover, including a ‘superb masked ball’.  However, an even greater entertainment was to come:   

Some days after we had a grand masquerade at the opera hous [sic] at Hannover, which was finely illuminated with wax lights.  The number of masks was prodigious.  The king was in Turkish dress, the turban of which was ornamented with a magnificent egret of brilliants: this mask was very proper for a prince … because it disguises well, and has a commanding aspect.  Lady Yarmouth was in the habit of a Sultana.

Bielfeld was clearly dazzled by royalty.  Even so, his account contradicts the image of George II as invariably boring and miserly.  When the mood took him, the king clearly knew how to royally entertain himself, his court and his subjects.

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800

Visit our  exhibition Georgians Revealed

When he became King of Great Britain in 1714, George I was fifty-four years old.  He has routinely been dismissed in popular histories as an old, dull German prince who spoke no English.  In fact, the king had some spoken and written English.  He had good French, German and Latin.  He preferred to use French, a language also popular with the British upper classes.  As the ruler of Hanover, George had enjoyed and fostered a court culture strongly influenced by France and Italy.  He brought these tastes with him to England.

George I, frontispiece. The Annals of King George, Year the First. London, 1716. (1568/8697)

In London, George I occasionally attended the public theatres – his preference was for musical works, particularly the newly imported Italian opera.  However, in November 1718 a troupe of French comedians arrived in London to play at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre.  On 26 November the King attended a performance. He saw two farces adapted from plays by Molière and the Original Weekly Journal  for 29 November reported ‘we hear, his Majesty gave 100 guineas’ to the company. George had obviously enjoyed the show.

In later years, George I occasionally attended English plays and as a patron of Handel he continued to go to the opera.  By the 1720s, the most popular entertainment in London’s theatres was the pantomime – a show which used dancing, singing and farcical action derived from the commedia dell’arte, with sophisticated scenes and machines intended to dazzle audiences.  In January 1726, the new pantomime at Lincoln’s Inn Fields was Apollo and Daphne. The Daily Post for 18 March recorded the King’s visit:

Last Night His Majesty went to the Theatre Royal in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields to see the Play of the Country Wife, and the Entertainment of Apollo and Daphne, in which was Perform’d a particular Flying on that Occasion, of a Cupid descending, and presenting his Majesty with a Book of the Entertainment, and then ascended.

The newspaper said nothing of the King’s reaction, but ‘the Audience seem’d much pleas’d’.  It is likely that the King enjoyed it too.

In the autumn of 1726 a company of Italian comedians arrived in London.  Their first performance, at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket on 28 September 1726, was both commanded and attended by the King with the Prince and Princess of Wales.  George I commanded every performance by the troupe while they were in London and attended at least eleven times.  He must have been among the company’s patrons. He obviously enjoyed the commedia dell’arte plays, with their swift, lively and bawdy action intermingled with dancing, which must surely have reminded him of the court entertainments of his younger years.

So, was George I really that dull?

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800

Further reading:
Ragnhild Hatton. George I. New haven and London, 2001
Harry William Pedicord. “By Their Majesties’ Command”. The House of Hanover at the London Theatres, 1714-1800. London, 1991.

Visit our exhibition Georgians Revealed

In 1787 the novelist Fanny Burney, then at court as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, encountered another royal servant the caricaturist Henry Bunbury (1750-1811).  He had been appointed Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York, second son of George III, in that year.  They met only from time to time, usually at the tea table, but although he was endlessly amusing she did not take to him.  She confided to her journal that ‘His serious manner is supercilious & haughty, & his easy conversation wants rectitude in its principles’.  Bunbury did not meet with the serious little novelist’s approval, although she could not help but enjoy his caricatures.

From Harry Thornber, Henry William Bunbury (1889) RB.23.b.6363

By the time he came to court, Henry Bunbury was well established as an amateur artist and, particularly, a caricaturist.  Following his grand tour in the late 1760s, Bunbury began to produce a continual flow of drawings and etchings.  He had studied drawing in Rome in 1770 and, after his return to London, he began to exhibit at the newly established Royal Academy of Arts.  In 1780 Bunbury was described by the art-lover Horace Walpole as ‘the second Hogarth’.  Walpole (son of Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole) had become an admirer of the artist from the very first exhibition of Bunbury’s works.

From Harry Thornber, Henry William Bunbury (1889) RB.23.b.6363

Bunbury’s drawings and engravings capture many aspects of Georgian life, from experiences on the grand tour to scenes from popular novels and from Shakespeare, caricatures of city businessmen and illustrations showing the comical accidents of horse-riders.  His most famous caricature is A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath, published in 1787 (Walpole quickly acquired a copy).  Bunbury obviously regarded it as important, for in 1789 he was portrayed by Sir Thomas Lawrence working on it.  He was one of a number of gentleman amateur artists who were creating works of social satire during the later 18th century.  Their status precluded them from images that were too pointed or too cruel.  Nevertheless, Bunbury’s work would later influence far more famous professional artists, including Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) and James Gillray (1756-1815), who had no such constraints.

Moira Goff
Curator, Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800

Further reading:
The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, ed. Peter Sabor. Oxford, 2011. Vol. 2 , 1787.
J.C. Riely, ‘Horace Walpole and “the second Hogarth”’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 9 (1975-6), 28-44.

Visit our new exhibition Georgians Revealed

If readers are looking for unusual Christmas presents, they should perhaps look no further than The Tower of Silence by Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chaiwala Chevalier, a detective story featuring the fictional detective Sexton Blake who appeared in many British comic strips and novels throughout the 20th century. Until earlier this year, Chevalier’s manuscript lay unrecognised, languishing in the basement of the British Library, when it was published for the first time by the Princeton historian Gyan Prakash.

‘Parsee Tower of Silence, Bombay’, taken by Bourne and Shepherd in the 1880s. The towers of silence (dakhmas) are enclosed towers in which Zoroastrians expose the dead to be eaten by vultures (seen here ghoulishly lined up waiting), thus avoiding pollution of the sacred elements fire, water or earth. While they are no longer in use today in Iran, they are still used by Zoroastrians in India and Pakistan.  
India Office Photographs, Photo 576/(2)  

Gyan Prakash’s introduction ‘Looking for Mr Chaiwala’ is almost as exciting as the story itself. He describes how his eyes lit on the title as he was wading through historical documents in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room in 2001. The manuscript had originally been classified as a printed book but was in fact a copy of a typescript, one of 100 copies apparently published in May 1928 in Bombay. Immediately hooked, he was dismayed to find the India Office Library copy ended abruptly on page 169. After a hunt lasting two years, he finally tracked down a copy with the remaining eight chapters and the novel was published by Harper Collins earlier this year.
 

The title page of The Tower of Silence with the otherwise unheard of publisher’s stamp ‘P.J. Chavalier & Co. Commisariat Buildings’, and a blue crayon annotation indicating that details of the book are to be found in the quarterly list of publications from Bombay, 3rd quarter, 1928.
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C285   

The novel is based on a historic event when on 25 August 1923 a London weekly, The Graphic, published an article on the Parsi tower of silence (dakhma) in Pune. Included in the article was a large aerial photograph showing corpses in the well of the tower. The photograph produced such a sense of outrage in Bombay that the Secretary of State for India was required to request the editor of The Graphic to destroy the photographic plate and negative.

The beginning of the story. In the typescript chapter one is preceded by a two-part introduction on the history of India and Zoroastrianism.
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C285  

The story begins at 2pm on a cloudless afternoon in April with the click of a camera shutter. Beram, a sophisticated and devout Parsi, equally at home in London or Bombay, seeks revenge on the perpetrators of the sacrilegious act, hotly pursued by Sexton Blake and his assistant Tinker. The plot progresses via murders, cobras, mongooses, deadly spiders and hypnotism ending with a final dénouement which takes place (guess where) in a ‘tower of silence’.

If readers want to find out more about Zoroastrianism they should visit the exhibition: ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’, on view at the Brunei Gallery SOAS until 15 December (one day extension by special arrangement), and of course they should read our posts on Zoroastrianism in the Asian and African Studies Blog (search for ‘Zoroastrian’).

Ursula Sims-Williams
Asian and African Studies 

Follow us on Twitter (@BLAsia_Africa)

Further reading:
Chaiwala, Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chevalier, and Gyan Prakash. The Tower of Silence. Harper Collins Publishers India, 2013.

File 5203 - Action taken regarding offence caused to Parsis over the publication of a photograph of the interior of the Parsi Tower of Silence; newspaper apology [file includes photograph]   IOR/L/PJ/6/1862, File 5203 : Sep-Oct 1923

Today we have a story from guest blogger Jocelyn Watson about how the British Library collections have helped her to write a play based on the life of Cornelia Sorabji.

For Christmas 2011 my brother gave me a present of a book.  I unwrapped it to discover An Indian Portia by Kusoom Vadgama.  I had never heard of the book before and I looked at my brother quizzically; his response was:  ‘Believe me, you’ll find it fascinating’.  Sure enough, I was gripped.  The book was the diligent compilation of the letters, diaries and articles of Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman in history to read law at Somerville College and one of India’s first female barristers.

From Cornelia Sorabji, India Calling (1934)    

Before becoming a writer, I was a lawyer and had studied law at Somerville’s sister college in Cambridge, Girton.  As my interest grew I began trawling the British Library archives.  The staff were so helpful and supportive and I was delighted to discover a wealth of material about this extraordinary woman.  I came across the law paper that she sat in 1889 and looked through it wondering how I would have managed.  The Master of Balliol College had obtained congregational consent for Cornelia to be able to sit the examination; the sole woman in a hall full of male students many of whom disapproved.

IOPP/MSS Eur F165/118

My Mother is Indian and my father English and when I asked family and friends in India, none of them had heard of Cornelia.  Similarly in England when I asked friends, former law students, they too knew nothing about her.  The more I delved into the rich resources that the British Library holds, the more I learnt and understood how invisible women’s histories can become, and how important it is that we acknowledge the women who have gone before us.  I was so grateful that the British Library had so carefully preserved all this valuable material.  

As a result I wrote Cornelia Calling and with the help and support of Kali Theatre Company, a charity that supports and encourages South Asian women to write, I was able to bring Cornelia Sorabji, a lawyer, a social reformer, an author, an extraordinary woman, to life.   The play is to be performed in London at the Tristam Bates Theatre on Friday 13 December at 7.30pm as part of the Kali Talkback 2013.

Jocelyn Watson